New House Before + After: Pantry Makeover

Welp, I know I've been talking about this project forever now, so the time has come to share the before + after with you...thus today, I present our DIY pantry makeover! I know it may not look that impressive (and my poor photography isn't helping), but let me tell you guys, this project was *quite* the undertaking for newbie home owners/DIY-ers like us. 

It's hard to tell up there in the 'before' picture, but in our old set-up, we had very little usable storage space. The shelves above the washer and dryer were crazy deep and poorly made, so storing anything anywhere but the outside edge of the lower shelves was a nightmare to reach. Plus, always having laundry on the floor in the kitchen on the weekends wasn't very tranquil (ahem, Ben!). 

So, as we prepare for bebe and make room for all of the new tupperware, bottles, snacks, and who-know-what-else comes along with a baby (I mean, if you have kids you probably know, but I don't really know yet!), we knew we would need more storage space in our kitchen. Thus, this revamp. 

Here are the steps that led us from the before picture (on the left) to the after (on the right)... 

Step 1. Deal with the washer + dryer. 
Before I get into the steps, I should tell you that originally, a broken washer is what started all of this. It was crappy and old, and we decided that instead of getting it fixed, we should just get a new, energy efficient set. When the delivery company came to deliver the new set that we had purchased, we found out that it wouldn't fit in our pantry--it wasn't deep enough (despite our measuring and feeling assured that it was!)-- so everything was set into motion. 

We decided that the best solution to this issue would be to move the washer + dryer down to the basement--which had always been our long-term plan, so we hired a plumber and electrician to come and install the pipes and electric we needed to make this move happen.

Once all of this was done, we had the delivery people return to install the new washer + dryer and remove the old ones. Giving us the picture below:

Step 2. Tear down the horrible wooden shelving. 
This was fun! Once we cleared everything out of the pantry, we took a big sledgehammer/mallet and just smashed at the crappy wooden shelving until it came down. Sayde didn't like the loud noises, but we found it very satisfying ;) Then we had to pry the edging off of the wall using a random assortment of tools (you can see the edging in the pic below, on the right). 

Steps 3 + 4. Prep the walls for painting and remove the linoleum. 
In order to get the walls smooth enough to paint, we had to spackle over all of the holes, gouges, and lines where the shelving had been smushed into the walls for who knows how long.

​Then we had to remove the horrible linoleum floor: this took way longer than we wanted it to and was pretty brutal. Thank goodness we don't have a whole kitchen of this!

Steps 5 + 6. Prime and paint the walls. 
The easiest part of all! We used leftover paint from the kitchen (*money-saver*) and just did one coat of primer and one coat of paint. That was all it needed (phew!). 

Steps 7 + 8. Put in new shelving and new flooring. 
I know some people hate this wire shelving, but given our skill set and limited budget for this project, it was the best choice for us. Figuring out which type of shelving to get and how to install it was the hardest part--once we'd figured out the basics, installing it didn't take too long.

And then the flooring! Again, because of our limited skills and budget, we went for easy peel + stick vinyl tile. Would we have gone for this if we were doing an entire kitchen? Probably not, but it was perfect for this tiny space (and SOOOOO easy).

Steps 9 + 10. Add shelf liner and then fill pantry back up with stuff.
In order to make the shelving a bit more substantial, we added thick shelf liner to each shelf. Once that was done, we were finished! We slowly put everything (that had been sitting on the floor in our guest bedroom FOR WEEKS) back into the pantry and were amazed at the space! We seriously have empty spaces in the pantry and we now have a few empty cabinets, as well--it's a dream come true! I'm sure we'll fill them soon enough, though ;) 

And there you have it! I still want to add some hooks to the walls and get things a bit more organized on the shelves, but it's been an amazing upgrade thus far and was well worth the effort. 

Now on to our next 100,000 projects! ;) 

{You can view more of our past home improvement projects here.}